The Pumpkin Run

On Sunday October 29th we ran The Pumpkin Run 5k. “We” meaning my brother, husband and we brought our 2 1/2 year old son for his first race in the jogger! Originally we had planning to bring our daughter too, but it was supposed to be 31 degrees at race time, so she went to Grandma and Grandpa’s instead.

Race Prep

Race prep, what? None of us had really done much as far as training goes for this race. I have been dealing with some plantar fasciitis issues and have not been running, my husband Brad ran a total of 2 times and my brother Eric hadn’t been running at all. What we did prepare were some fun costumes! I pulled out an old bumblebee costume, Brad went as Batman, our son picked out a Minion costume, and Eric borrowed Brad’s Elmo costume. Due to our lack of preparation, the three of us decided that we were going to take it at an easy pace, and run/walking was totally fine. It was our first race with a jogger too, so we weren’t going to push it too much.

View from the top of my little Minion!

Race Day!

We met at my parents house so we could drop off the baby and all ride together to the race. As we were getting our race bibs pinned on I looked down at my brother’s feet to see that he was wearing hunting boots. “Um, E, what’s going on with your feet?”, “I don’t have any running shoes, but these are really comfortable”. LOL. My brother is the kind of athlete that could show up with all the wrong gear on and still smoke half of the field.

We arrived at the race with plenty of time to park and get the jogger unloaded. As we unloaded the truck, other racers were arriving. My husband turned to me and said, “Um, Colleen, we are the only ones in costumes.” I was like “No, there will be people dressed up, this is a Halloween race.” As we walked closer to the starting line, we soon realized we were pretty much the only ones dressed up. Eric drew a lot of attention with his giant Elmo head, but none of us really cared since we were treating this as a fun run anyway.

Ready, Set, GO!

When it was race time we lined up at the way back of the pack since we had a jogger. The course was very narrow so we were about a good 1/4 mile back from the starting line. We couldn’t even hear the starting bell, but walked slowly up to the starting line as the other racers cleared out ahead of us. We started out at a nice easy pace as we crossed the start line. The start of a race is always congested, but having a jogging stroller adds another element of challenge as you try not to roll over the people in front of you! The three of us had a faster pace than many of the other runners around us, so we steadily passed other runners on this narrow course. There were a lot of spectators lining the course route and Elmo got shout outs from everyone who saw him!

Usually when we run with the jogging stroller, we hear cheering. The usual is “Go Mom Go!” or “Go Dad Go!” But this time it was “Go Uncle Eric…I mean Elmo!” and “Mom, Elmo is smokin’ us!”, which got a few laughs from the people around us.

Home Stretch

When we got about a mile from the finish line, my brother with his giant Elmo head turns to me and says,”I have some gas left in the tank; you?”, I said “I’m good to go; Brad?”, “I’m good, but let’s wait till we get to where we lined up.” Ok, we were all in agreement. The butterflies of excitement and adrenaline started coming. We got to our mark and the three of us were still weaving around other racers. I looked at Brad and Eric and said “Let’s do this!”. I don’t think Eric heard me the first time because he was still running right in front of me. I thought,”Oh maybe he’s more tired than we thought.” but I yelled, “Elmo, GO!” mostly because he was in my way and I was about to ram his ankles with the jogger. In a split second Eric took off…full sprint..high steppin’ to the finish line in his frickin’ clodhoppers! I almost had to stop running because I was laughing so hard watching this giant Elmo head bobbing to the finish line at full tilt! He had the crown cracking up and a shoutout from the race Emcee. Brad and I finished the race together and got our own shoutout for our costumes as well.

This was one of the most fun races I have ever run in. Brad told me that it wasn’t the gingerly pace he was promised, but was happy with how we finished. I had to apologize to both of them because I really couldn’t help myself in trying to push the pace. I knew pushing too hard would aggrivate my feet again too, and I am happy to say that after a little ice and some stretching I felt great afterwards! Fully prepared for a race or not, you don’t always know who is going to show up; sometimes it’s you as an athlete in peak condition ready to PR? Or sometimes it’s Bumble Bee, Batman, Minion and Elmo ready to crush it!